It takes a lot of courage to share your experience in therapy with the world. Many people conceal the fact that they see a shrink even from close friends. In some cultures psychiatry is blasphemous, think The Sopranos. But just as talking to a shrink is (obviously) therapeutic, writing about the experience can also serve the same purpose. So can reading about it. As such, Daphne Merkin’s recent New York Times Magazine article about her 40 year odyssey in search of that elusive analyst, the one who will truly penetrate her problems with precision and provide her with the requisite warmth and assurance she seeks, is a joy to read.

The essay as a whole is constructed very cleverly in that it conveys all the contradictory reactions most patients have to therapy and thus has the feel of a session in itself. The effect therefore was therapeutic for me, as Merkin’s article articulates many thoughts I’ve been aware of but have not explicitly formulated or stated. On the one hand, her hunt for the perfect doctor is reminiscent of Ahab’s insatiable quest for Moby Dick, as she implicitly longs for something that cannot be attained, or, more specifically, for someone who does not exist: “what I wanted was for her [a therapist from the author's youth] to be my mother, just as early on I longed for my male therapists to be my father… I wanted, that is, to be adopted-actually adopted-just as I would later wish for one or the other of my therapists to leave his wife for me.”

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A Fairy Story for the Chinese Female Single Patient:

Introduction

Often in therapy a story can help the client to understand their own emotions and feelings about their own situation. At first they just hear the story as a narrative but soon as with most good stories the client puts themselves into the action and associates with the plot line, as they try to make sense of how they can assimilate the underlying psychological message to their own lives.

In China many young girls under 27 years old are obsessed with finding Mr. Right, the boy who is from the good family, with a good education, with a good job with good prospects and has a good character. I use the word “good” here many times because it is easily understood by the girls themselves to mean a boy (young man) that can offer them a future that contains security for her, her family and material wealth. Love is always low on the list of requirements prior to marriage in China but woefully regretted later when actually betrothed.

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In 1997 the American Psychological Association passed a resolution reaffirming that “homosexuality is not a mental disorder” and raising ethical concerns about attempts to change sexual orientation via psychotherapy (known  as reparative or conversion therapy). Unfortunately, that was not  the end of this questionable practice.  Results of a  survey conducted in London and published this year suggest that some therapists still see anything other than heterosexuality as pathological.  Some therapists reported therapeutic goals of  changing clients’ sexual orientation or helping to “curb homosexual feelings’.  It is truly disheartening that any clinicians could see these as reasonable therapeutic goals,  despite evidence that this approach is ineffective at best or extremely damaging at worst.  For an in depth look at the subject, see Sexual conversion therapy: ethical, clinical, and research perspectives by Drescher, Shidlo and Schroeder.

As a rationale for trying to change sexual orientation, perhaps some therapists might argue that they would meet the client where he/she is at.  What is an ethical therapist to do if  a client presents with the goal of changing their own sexual orientation? Or with distress related to a lesbian or gay orientation?

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“Adolescence is a period of Storm and Stress”- G. Stanley Hall

“Human Development Process” is the most mysterious part, nature had ever created. Everyone agrees with it. While passing through the various stages under this “development” process, we attain childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Among these “Adolescence” perhaps is the most complicated phase, we ever experience.

Adolescence seems to be a chaotic and at the same time, a vibrant period of human life. According to Wolman, “adolescence is a transitional stage of development between childhood and adulthood.” It’s the period, when young people develop an abstract thinking, awareness of their sexuality and peer-grouping as well. It’s a time when youngsters start taking new responsibilities, establish a quest for their identity and begin the trek to find a place in the world.

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